


Blood in the Ambient

by Sholio



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 12:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21208616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: There's a strange nighthorse on the mountainside, with an injured rider. Fusion with CJ Cherryh's "Finisterre."





	Blood in the Ambient

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).

> For those who haven't read the fusion source, the Finisterre universe is a sci-fi-masquerading-as-fantasy setting in which all wildlife (except for non-native humans) are telepathic, sharing their thoughts and emotions through a telepathic collective known as the "ambient." A small subset of humans are psychically bonded to the native nighthorses. There is [an overview of the basics of the setting here on Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finisterre_universe)

It was a crisp, bitter night, and Flow was restless. Leo felt it, curled in the loft above the rider quarters, and she knew Zach did too, as he tossed and turned in the grip of uneasy dreams. 

But he could still sleep. Leo, always more sensitive to the ambient than her brother, could no more have slept than she could have flown. Her head was full of Flow's thoughts, which were all about _running_ and _cold-deep-snow_ and _blood blood_ and _hurt scared run run run_: a swirling tangle of ever-changing nighthorse thoughts, from an edgy nighthorse who should have been bedded down to sleep in comfortable hay.

But Flow was awake, and so Mother would be up as well. Leo crawled out of the bed she shared with her brother and pulled on her warm wool clothes in the chill of the loft. Dad was still asleep on the far side of the loft, sleeping restlessly like Zach, but still asleep. Like Zach, he was comparatively insensitive to the nighthorses' thoughts, town-raised and town-blind; he felt the ambient, but in what Leo couldn't help thinking of as a childlike way, insensitive and unaware, catching just enough to be blindsided by it.

But _she_ wasn't overwhelmed, so she dropped down the ladder in the quick rung-to-rung guided fall that she'd learned long ago. The fireplace was banked for the night, but there was a candle on the table, a blanket draped over the chair, and her mother's notebook open by the candle. Leo conscientiously moved the candle a little further from the paper, and then she reached for her warm fur-lined coat on its hook, and opened the door. Cold air swirled in, along with the warm smell of nighthorses and hay.

"Mother?" she called softly.

"What are you doing up, little wally-boo?" Mother's voice came back quietly from the darkness. Eyes gleamed in the light from the door, two sets of them: Mother's and Flow's. Leo closed the door before Mother could chastise her for it, shutting her into the darkness of the stable.

"I couldn't sleep. What's wrong?"

As her eyes adjusted, she saw that Mother was walking Flow around the inside of the stable, really nothing more than a large room with comfortable piles of hay that also served as an arctic entry to help keep the cold out of the comparatively cold-sensitive humans' sleeping quarters. Theirs was not a large town and consequently the rider quarters were equally small; sometimes in the summer they had riders rolled up in bedrolls by the fire, and bunking down with their nighthorses in the hay. But in the winter, it felt comparatively large, with just their little family -- including Flow, who was as much a part of the family as any of the rest of them.

"Careful, heart," her mother said. "She might kick you by accident. Stay back."

Leo did, because one thing you learned growing up in a rider family was to take orders when they were delivered in that particular tone. But it was all wrong. Flow might sometimes be restless in the depths of winter, wanting to go out and hunt -- but Leo wasn't used to seeing her like this, especially at night when the family was asleep and she soaked up their sleepiness and slept too. 

Flow liked to seek her own kind occasionally, and Leo had seen her enjoying the company of other nighthorses when strange riders arrived, or when Mother took Leo out on rides to other towns. But for the most part, Flow seemed to consider herself a part of the human herd. She had been there from the time that Leo and her brother were babies. The first words Leo had learned had been carried on the nighthorse's thoughts. It was clear that Flow had both of the Lieberman children classified under "foal, strange baby, keep safe" and the very idea of Flow hurting her was too foreign to contemplate.

And yet, there _was_ something wrong with Flow tonight. She was stressed and upset, in a way she rarely was normally; for a nighthorse Flow was a comparatively calm individual, perhaps due to living closely with a group of humans as she normally did. The ambient rarely got her ruffled and anxious the way that it did with many of their visiting nighthorses.

"She keeps thinking about blood," Leo said, keeping herself well back from Flow's feet to make sure she wasn't sent back to bed. "Do you get that too?"

"I do, but ..." Mother turned and looked toward the gate. Leo did too, because Flow's disordered thoughts had finally coalesced into something coherent, and it was _nighthorse rider blood nighthorse hurt hurt STRANGERS COME??_

"There's someone out there," Leo said.

"Someone ... who is hurt," Mother said, and Leo was sensitive enough to the ambient to sense, through Flow, that Mother had pulled away from saying what she was really thinking, but Leo also caught the edge of it through Flow's incomplete understanding. _Hurt bad hurt hurt coming here?_

Mother was shrugging into her heavy furs at the stable door and Leo hurried to reach for her own outerwear.

"No!" Mother said sharply, and then softened. "No, wally-boo. This isn't the sort of thing where I can carry you in front of me like when we used to go down to the valley."

"I can help --"

"You can help by staying here and watching out for your father and Zach. You know they're ambient-blind compared to us. They won't know what's happening."

_If I was a rider, they couldn't leave me behind._ The thought chafed at her and, with a lifetime's practice, she tried to keep her own anxiety and worry buttoned down where Flow wouldn't sense it. Yes, she wanted it, wanted it more than air or heat or ... or _anything,_ but wanting too much could impress itself onto a nighthorse who didn't _think_ the way humans did, could lead to Flow going out on her own to try to bring back what she thought Leo wanted. And this was exactly the sort of situation where they didn't need that.

So she swallowed it; she didn't fight, she didn't ask to be taken along as a second rider (and _definitely_ did not think that if she was a few years younger she probably would have been, because at that age she'd been just too young to be safely left alone and Mother had taken her _everywhere,_ not like now, when she was Old Enough To Be Left Behind).

She put on her furs anyway and went out into the yard with Mother and Flow. While Mother waited on Flow's back with both of them blowing clouds of cold steam into the moonlit air, Leo struggled with the gate bolt with half-frozen fingers, finally got it, and threw it back and dragged the heavy gate out of the way, kicking to get it through the packed snow and ice that Zach was _supposed_ to have shoveled yesterday.

"Lock it up tight, baby, and don't open 'til I say so," Mother said, and Leo stood back, with no choice, as Mother rode through the gate into the moon-sharp woods, trailing steam from their breath.

Leo dragged the gate shut and threw the bolts home, but she stayed there, pressed against the cold wooden bars. She tucked her half-frozen hands into her fur-lined sleeves and warmed them against her opposite elbows, and she listened, listened, listened.

_Flow, tell me, show me._

The ambient opened up to her slowly. Small skittering lives in the moonlight, warm breathing bodies and tiny minds; cold air in warm nighthorse nostrils, holding back from running in snow, _Sarah says no;_ goblin cat hunting, small sharp bloodthirsty mind; tired tired, exhausted nighthorse, hurt rider, blood and blood and snow and blood ...

Leo leaned on the gate, barely breathing, _listening_ so hard her head hurt ...

Nighthorse walking through the snow, dragging steps, and the thought-concept that came into her mind was something dark and swirling and hard to understand; it was a _strange_ horse, a horse from far down in the valley, and while Leo didn't feel any hint of the madness she'd been warned to beware of, she felt this horse's fierce and burning desire to hurt those who had hurt it, who had hurt its herdmates. To punish so they could never hurt again. _Punisher,_ was this horse.

And its rider was a faint echo, slumped over its back, blood on glossy black hide and thoughts drifting disjointedly in the ambient ...

Leo pressed her fists to her temples and listened, listened, _listened ..._

She saw, suddenly, with perfect clarity, her mother and Flow riding through the patchy moonlight between ice-sharp pine shadows. The strange nighthorse and its rider were near. Mother sensed it, and so did Flow, turning her head, ears perked and listening. Soft crunching of nighthorse feet in snow, and also the ambient, tentative now, questing. _Enemy?_ and Flow's alarm flared and Mother was calming her and Leo pressed to the gate, panting in anxious sympathy.

"Hello?" Mother called out to the night. Leo heard it through Flow's sharp-pricked ears. "Speak now, stranger."

Leo was used to this odd many-layered in/out way of looking at things (through Mom's eyes, through Flow, through the newcomers' mental echo in the ambient) but somehow she never quite got used to it. She was Mom and Flow _(curious/protective/foals-to-defend)_, she was the strange nighthorse Punisher _(angry/fierce/defend defend/bloodonsnow)_, and on some level she was the nighthorse's rider, a strange dazed viewpoint that was even less human than the nighthorses', nothing but pain and grief that left her dizzy as she strained against the gate to catch every scrap of what was happening outside.

"If you want us to help you, we will, but you need to come to us," Mother said, and she touched Flow's flank with her boot. Together, united in that unique nighthorse-rider way that Leo so envied, they took a few steps toward the dark shadows under the pine forests that stretched down the flanks of the mountain.

Movement, deep within those shadows. Leo's breath caught in her throat with cold, and she struggled to see it all, from both the viewpoint of Flow and of the strange nighthorse as they stepped carefully towards each other. The strange horse -- Punisher -- stepped high with legs that were cut up from the icy snow and sniffed at Flow's nostrils, while his rider slumped over his mane with one hand knotted in it, barely managing to stay on the horse's back.

_Worry worry blood hurt scared, so much running, such a long long time ..._

"It's all right," Mother said, her voice gentle, and guided Flow with careful nudges up alongside the strange nighthorse. It was a dangerous thing to do; there was no way to know how two unfamiliar nighthorses would react to each other. But Flow sniffed at the stranger's nostrils, and didn't shy away from him.

Mother nudged at the nighthorse's rider, huddled over its mane, and he uncurled slightly, responding to her light, gentle touch. 

"Maria," he gasped, and fell onto them both.

*

It was enough to drive a man half mad, David sometimes thought, living with nighthorse thoughts.

Oh, he'd known what he was getting into; at least he thought he had. He knew when he fell for Sarah that there was always going to be a third ... creature in the relationship, namely Flow. He could have stayed inside the city walls, taken Sarah as a lover occasionally when she was in town, never known his children, or else taken them in and raised them never knowing their mother ...

But that was a thought he refused to consider. It was bad enough when Sarah left in the spring, especially when the children were small, weeping into his legs and begging to know when Mother would come home. It was worse when she took Leo with her. But all he could do was take care of things as best he could. When riders came in when Sarah wasn't in town, they were surprised beyond all measure to find a townsman living in the rider quarters, especially a townsman with two small children. Sarah had made it clear that he could, perhaps should, keep a house in town, far enough from the nighthorses that they wouldn't trouble his thoughts except for the occasional nightmares that everyone had in a town with walls so close to the horses as Winterspar's. And he could think of no logical reason why not ... no reason, except that it felt wrong to abandon the bed he shared with Sarah, even when she wasn't there; felt wrong to make a second home in town when they already _had_ a home, the one with the door that Leo had helped him hang when they had to replace the old one, the home with the marks on the fireplace moldings where they'd measured the children's changing heights as they grew.

So he lived with nighthorses, because the woman he loved did, and the children he cherished had grown up with it and didn't know anything else.

But then there were nights like this, when the cold outside went straight down his spine, and he sat bolt upright from dreams that were too intense and vivid and _strange_ to be his own.

Across the loft, Zach tossed and turned in the grip of his own uneasy dreams. David climbed out of bed and went over to stroke his son's shoulder until Zach subsided into a deeper sleep. Zach had always been less sensitive to the nighthorses than the rest of the family. For Leo, growing up around them had given her an unusual acuity, but with Zach it was the opposite; he'd almost gotten used to it, as if he could learn to work around the presence of other thoughts in his head in a way that David had never been able to do.

Confused and worried thoughts that were still bouncing around in his mind, like a nightmare that had followed him back to the real world. He crouched, half-naked, beside Zach's bed, shivering in the chill of the loft and trying to shake those vivid memories of blood on snow, fear, cold, running. Was all of that Flow? He still had trouble telling nighthorse thoughts apart, but he didn't think it could possibly be. Flow was _here,_ he could tell that much, and nighthorses didn't usually have nightmares; it wasn't how they were wired.

Still, Sarah and Leo were both up, so clearly something was going on.

The door banged downstairs, and he heard voices, low and tense. He recognized the cadence of both their voices, but he also recognized the urgency, even if he couldn't make out the words.

David sighed deeply and dressed hastily before clambering down the ladder. He wasn't sure what he expected to find, but it definitely _wasn't_ Sarah and Leo trying to navigate the issue of getting a fur-clad stranger into _their_ living room while a dark nighthorse head poked in after them.

"No, hold his head there -- yeah, help me get him down -- no, get back, you're not helping --"

"What in the hell is going on down here?" David asked, wide awake now. Having strangers showing up in the middle of the night wasn't _that_ unusual in the rider outpost, though generally in the summer and generally with strangers who were capable of moving under their own power. This visitor was injured. He caught flashes of it through the ambient, pain and disorientation not his own.

"Heat some water," Sarah announced, and turned back, trying to shove on the strange nighthorse's muzzle with one hand while holding onto the stranger with the other. She said nothing aloud, but David could tell that she was thinking at the nighthorse, even if he couldn't clearly tell what she was "saying." Whatever it was, the nighthorse pulled back, retreating so Sarah was able to shut the door.

"We have to take care of the horse," Sarah said, as she and Leo, between them, laid their burden on the bench beside the fire. "And I'm sorry, it has to be me; I don't dare let either of you out there, the way they are right now." She grabbed a handful of rags from the basket inside the door where they put scraps for bandages, horse rubdown, or whatever else was needed, and vanished through the door.

David was left looking at his daughter across the bench containing an unconscious stranger. "What the hell's going on?" he asked her.

"I don't know." Leo took a breath. "He's, uh ... hurt, I think? He was -- _they_ were out there. Mom and Flow brought them in. I think ..." Her face went distant, _listening,_ in that way she had, to whatever was going on out there with Sarah and the strange nighthorse. "I think there were others. He had a partner, another horse and rider. Something bad happened, I don't know what."

"Got to be bad, to get them out in the mountains at this time of year," David muttered. He looked down at the rider on the bench, whose snow-caked furs were starting to melt and drip onto the floor, and sighed again. "Okay, hon, go upstairs and get the spare blankets out of the chest, and my clean shirt. Try not to wake up Zach."

He might've known that last one would be a lost cause. It was two curious children, not just one, who came back down the ladder, hauling bundles of blankets and clothing.

Meanwhile, David had started trying to wrestle the strange rider out of his furs. It wasn't just snow they were soaked with, but also blood. The stranger was so limp and pale, cold to the touch, that David thought at first he was dead, but a slow pulse still beat in the pale throat.

"What's happening?" Zach asked, dropping his armload of blankets beside the fire. "Is there another horse out there?"

"Yes, which is why you two need to stay inside and help me." He wished he could get them to stay upstairs, because there was no telling what they were going to find under the strange rider's bloody furs. Some things children shouldn't see. But they would see them anyway through the ambient, he reminded himself. Children had to grow up fast in a rider outpost. There were those who said he should've just taken Zach and Leo and gone back inside the walls, for their own good. He'd never listened to those people, and now he had to walk the walk.

So he got the kids to help him maneuver the stranger's limp, unwieldy limbs out of the half-frozen, blood-sodden furs. The kids impressed him with their solemn steadiness, not even reacting too badly when he got the furs off and saw the deep claw marks scored into the stranger's side, showing flashes of bone under the gore. They had helped with this kind of thing before -- when Flow cut her leg on the ice; when Sarah had to go out and retrieve a woodcutter who had driven his axe right through his own ankle under the mind-twisting effects of the ambient's many hunters. They were probably better with field medicine than David was, and when Leo actually asked if she could stitch up the stranger's wounds ("Mom says I need the practice"), David was more than happy to turn it over to her. Just sponging away the blood was bad enough.

He had wanted to see the damage for himself before he decided if it was worth waking up the doctor in town. There was no point in rousing everyone if the stranger was just going to die in the next hour, and no point not waiting for daylight if the injuries weren't too bad. As it was, he still didn't know. It was bad, but the stranger's breathing was shallow but steady. Leo had her head bent over her work, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth, carefully and neatly working on stitches that were tidier than anything she could possibly have managed if she'd been told to sew up a rip in her own clothing. David had to avert his eyes; he could've done if he'd had to (he was fairly sure), but he was sure as hell glad that he didn't. There was enough of it in the ambient.

And Sarah was still out with the nighthorses; she hadn't come back. That was what eventually decided him. He needed another adult here.

"Zach, go through the tunnel into town and wake up the doc."

"Oh, come on!" Zach complained, but he reached for his boots.

After Zach was gone, it was very quiet. The ambient had calmed down. David thought about sticking his head out the door to see what was going on with Sarah, then thought about stirring up an unfamiliar nighthorse that had been on the verge of panic half an hour ago, and thought better of it.

Instead, he washed his hands and started cleaning up the room. He hung the stranger's furs to dry by the fire; they'd see how much was salvageable once everything dried. Well-made winter clothes weren't cheap. The stranger, whoever he was, wouldn't thank them to discard anything without seeing if it could be mended.

"Need help, Leo?"

"I've got this, Dad. I'm almost done."

The stranger remained unconscious, probably for the best, David thought. Their visitor was waxy-pale with a heavy scruff of beard. Even deeply unconscious, as he was now, there was something tense about him, a coiled-spring alertness as if he never truly slept, as if he could spring from sleep to full wakefulness in a heartbeat.

He probably could. Most riders, in David's experience (and he had quite a lot of experience with them by now), existed in a state of constant edginess. Part of it was their lifestyle, part of it was the nighthorses they shared their minds with, and part of it was ... maybe just _them,_ maybe they'd been that way even before the nighthorses called them from beyond the town wall. Maybe that was why the nighthorses called to them; they recognized a kindred spirit. Perhaps even in town, even as children, the riders had been that way a little bit already -- fey and strange, drawn to the world beyond the wall.

It was certainly part of what had drawn him to Sarah. She was like no one he'd ever met, a fierce young woman a year or two older than he was, with a red-gold braid and hard muscles and eyes that moved constantly, taking in an entire room at a glance. She used to perch on the edges of chairs, or refuse to sit down at all, leaning against walls and doorframes with her hip cocked and her long belt knife lying along her leather-clad thigh. She couldn't read, could write just enough to sign her mark on a piece of paper. The things that had always captivated David (math and science and the fragments of wisdom caught between the pages of the often-copied books their ancestors had brought from the stars) held no interest for her; she was far more fascinated by the tracks of goblin-cats and the seasonal rhythm of snowmelt in the mountains.

Sarah had calmed and relaxed over the years, but she still had a fundamental alertness that David loved and admired -- and recognized in others. Some riders were more that way, some less, and some were halfway to being wild creatures themselves. This man, David thought, was one of the wilder ones, those who preferred the wilderness and the company of the nighthorses to human company, human civilization.

There was a part of him that wished Sarah had never brought him back. That kind were dangerous, sometimes.

But he was also a human being in need of help. David spread the thickest blanket on the flagstones in front of the hearth. "When you've got that done, help me move him off the bench. He'll be more comfortable here. Leave the bandages off so the doc can look at it."

Leo nodded, rinsed the needle and sterilized it for a second time in the fire, and put away her sewing kit. She gripped the stranger's feet and helped David move him off the bench. He was struck all over again by how strong she was; she was still a child in some ways, but she was growing up fast, and growing up into Sarah's child. Leo was going to be a rider; David had no doubt of it. He was already braced for the first time he'd have to watch her ride through the gates on a nighthorse of her own. It was bad enough when Sarah had started taking Leo out with her. He wanted to stop her, stop them -- but how could he? He'd chosen this life, and the worst thing he could do would be to try to bend them toward him intentionally because he was afraid of what might happen to them in the great wild world out there, with all its dangers.

Dangers of which this rider was living proof. David had seen the scars on the stranger's naked torso before they tucked blankets around him. Sarah had scars too; he'd mapped them all on long nights under their blankets. He had no idea what would make anyone covet that sort of life, a life that had sent this rider to them bloody and half-dead, with his partner apparently dead out there on the mountainside.

"His partner's dead, isn't she?" Leo said softly, reaching for the blanket tucked around the stranger's face, and David flinched, not sure if she was picking up the thought from him or from the stranger or from Sarah. The ambient was filled with bloody thoughts tonight, and he was only catching its trailing edge. Leo must be dealing with a lot more.

"I don't know. Don't borrow trouble, wally-boo."

"Stop calling me that, Dad," she said, frowning. "I'm not a little kid anymore."

No, David thought sadly. She wasn't, but she didn't know how much faster she was having to grow up compared to her age-mates in town, with adult thoughts and adult concerns pouring into her head all the time.

There was a sudden flurry of steps in the tunnel, and the house side of the double door to the town opened. "Dad!" Zach called. "I got Doc Page!"

Karen Page ducked through the door's low threshold behind him -- it was intentionally small, sized to ensure that nighthorses and most of the larger wild animals couldn't fit. She pushed back her hood, and golden hair spilled free. "Hi, David."

"Hi, Karen." He was never going to be able to call her Doc Page. In a town this small, everyone knew each other, and she was never going to be anything other than the little blonde girl who had run along behind the much older Page cousins who were David's age-mates and friends. But she'd been apprenticed to old Doc Urich for going on ten years now, and with the doctor growing feeble and shaky-handed, had been increasingly taking over his practice. 

"Where's my patient? Ah." She knelt beside the stranger and pulled back the blankets. "Tussled with something nasty, didn't he?"

"Is there anything that isn't nasty out there?" David said. Leo rolled her eyes, but Karen shared a brief smile with him. It was good to be around other town people every once in a while.

"Who sewed him up?" Karen asked, prodding at the ribs around the injury.

"Me," Leo said.

"Good job." Karen wiped down the flesh around the stitches with a cloth dipped in something sharp-smelling. "You want an apprenticeship, come talk to me. You have steady hands. I'd love to have you."

"In _town?"_ Leo said, wrinkling her nose. "No way. I'm going to be a rider."

"Leo. Be polite and thank K -- Doc Page."

"Thanks," Leo said perfunctorily. For all her obvious lack of interest in doctoring as a formal profession, she was leaning past Karen's elbow with her nose in the middle of everything, fascinated by the doctor's every move.

"He's not dead yet, then?" Zach said, crouching beside their visitor. "I was really thinking we'd come back and he'd be -- you know. There was _so_ much blood."

"Even a superficial cut can bleed a lot," Karen said. She opened a jar and poured out some tablets into her palm. "Now, these are antibiotics, all right? Crush one up and mix it with a little water and see if you can get him to drink it, and after that, see if you can get one down him every twelve hours or so. Infection is the worst danger for him right now. Otherwise, keep him calm and warm, and treat him as if he's recovering from an illness. Soft foods, plenty of fluids, a little alcohol for medicinal purposes but not a lot."

She accepted a cup of tea, and was sipping it at the table when Sarah came back in from the stable, tired-looking, with straw on her pants and in her hair. "Doc Page," she said politely, hanging her coat on its hook by the door.

"Sarah," Karen greeted her, just as polite, but David had seen her face change when Sarah came in. 

Karen, and Doc Urich before her, were different from most of the townspeople. Karen was willing to come all the way to the outer ring of the palisade to treat a patient, even a rider, not insisting that her patient come to her. She'd never spoken in David's hearing of devils, never been anything less than polite. But there was still a level of comfort with David that she never would have, never could have, with Sarah.

Maybe that was why David felt the need to get up and go over to Sarah and kiss her, taking her wet gloves from her to put by the fire, and deliberately ignoring the kids' indulgent eyerolls at their parents' affection. "Horses settled down?" he asked, though he knew the answer by the absence of the low-level headache he'd had earlier tonight.

"They're doing all right." She glanced over at the stranger by the fire, but didn't ask about his condition, and David realized -- belatedly, _far_ belatedly -- that she already knew the stranger was recovering from the reaction of his nighthorse, and by the same token, if he'd died they would have had a _far_ greater threat on their hands than an anxious and agitated horse. An icy chill went down David's spine, followed by a fast-burning anger as he began to realize the magnitude of the danger that Sarah had brought back with her tonight. To the town, full of people who depended on her -- to her _children_ \--

"David," Sarah said sharply, both anger and alarm on her face, and he realized what he was doing even as he began to feel a growing agitation that wasn't his own. Sarah had just gotten the nighthorses calmed down; now he was rousing them again with his fury at Sarah's abandonment of -- _No,_ he told himself, and struggled to find the mental discipline she had taught him, in the same patient way he had taught her letters and elementary math. _Green pastures. Quiet clouds. Rushing streams._ He had to have it out with her about this; maybe he could take her to the middle of the town, as far from the horses as possible, and let her know what he thought of -- _No, no, not now. Later. Don't think of it. Rushing streams. Clouds flowing in a west-blowing breeze._

Karen looked utterly baffled, aware something was happening, but unable to understand what it was. She must be feeling the edge of the nighthorses' anxiety, but it would be even less for her than it was for David. If it kicked up again, though -- if _he_ stirred it up again -- she'd feel it. They all would. And probably half the people in town, many of whom had most likely just settled back into sleep from nightmares they couldn't understand.

"I appreciate you coming out, Doc Page," Sarah said quietly. "But I think you'd best be leaving now. Get back to your warm bed."

To her credit, Karen rose gracefully enough. "Yes, of course. Thank you for the tea."

"Wait," David said. She'd come out in the dark and the cold, braved the mental assault of the ambient, brought them medical drugs that were slow to manufacture and expensive to come by, and all to treat the injuries of a stranger. He leaned down to rummage in the chest along the wall where he kept his books, augmented by new acquisitions that Sarah brought back for him from all of her journeys, even though she could barely read well enough (even after all his lessons) to tell what a book was about, let alone understand its contents. "For your help tonight, and perhaps a few future visits to be sure he's healing all right -- will this be enough?"

The book was a new acquisition from Sarah's last-summer travels, a very old one on chemistry, and he hadn't had a chance to do more than read the first few chapters yet -- going slowly, struggling to understand, savoring every page and trying to absorb the material as he always did with a new book. He'd been looking forward to many long winter evenings poring over it. But he could borrow it back from her, when he wanted to.

"This is wonderful," Karen murmured, flipping through the first few pages. "Yes ... yes, it's more than enough. This must have cost you dearly."

"We can spare it," David said. He had no idea what it had cost; Sarah never told him. She just brought him presents, gifts to lay at his feet from the far places she journeyed to, places he could barely even imagine.

"Thank you," Karen said. She held the book close as if it was precious. But she also took the time to go over to the stranger, touching his forehead with the back of her hand and taking another look at the stitches in his side, pressing at the flesh above and below Leo's neat stitches. "Get that antibiotic down him as soon as you can, and come get me if he starts to run a fever or if the stitches start to leak pus or develop a bad smell."

She left by way of the tunnel, and David worked on crushing up the pill as she'd instructed, trying to let his thoughts reduce down to the simple actions of his hands the way Sarah had taught him. He was angry. He couldn't be angry. And he resented the stranger -- but it wasn't the rider's fault, and anyway, that was worse, because if the strange nighthorse picked up on his thoughts, and decided he was a threat --

There was a low thump from out in the stable.

"David," Sarah murmured, low and fierce. She took the bowl and spoon from his hands, with the pill a crushed heap of powder in the middle. "I'll do this. Go up to bed."

"I'm not going to leave you alone with --"

"David," she said calmly -- always calmly, he sometimes hated that about her even while understanding what a necessity it was. "You have to go upstairs. If you can't, go into town, spend the night with your parents. Do you understand?"

"Yes." He _did_ understand, and that was the worst part. Plus, the kids were there, looking at them wide-eyed. They had almost never seen their parents fight, for this exact reason. But now the ambient shivered with emotion, a tense and stressful tangle that David couldn't unravel; he only knew that it was putting him even more on edge than he already was.

So he kissed Sarah, let the kids see that things were normal, or at least as normal as they could get under the circumstances. "Come on, kids," he said. "Up to bed." And he tried not to let the thought slip out that maybe he was scoring a point by making sure they came with him, rather than staying down here with her, and the stranger, and the nighthorses.

It wasn't like that. But tonight, it almost felt like that. And he tried not to let himself notice the way Leo looked at Sarah, and waited for Sarah's slight nod before she got up from the table.

They all climbed up into the dark. He hugged the kids goodnight, and shed his outer clothes and crawled into the cold bed. From across the loft, there were the little rustles and whispers of the kids settling into bed. David lay in bed and realized he'd put himself in a situation where he had nothing to do but think, nothing to distract himself except letting his mind run down the exact tracks that it couldn't be allowed to, for all of their sakes.

He could get up, get a candle and a book, but it would mean going downstairs, where Sarah was, and the stranger was.

He gritted his teeth. He _knew_ it wasn't her fault, and certainly not the stranger's fault. But damn it ... the things that could have happened, could still happen --

Restlessness crawled under his skin, and he suspected it wasn't his.

_Calm. Calm. Mountain brooks. Clouds. Deep soft snow._

He ran his fingers across the crinkling straw in the mattress. That actually did help, crimping the straws one by one. He started counting them, trying to focus on the numbers, using his fingers to tick off the multiplication table.

_Six times nine is fifty-four ..._

He wasn't sure what the nighthorses made of that, but it worked for him, at least. The jittery edge of the ambient faded out of his consciousness, and eventually, he slept.

*

After David went upstairs, Sarah worked on grinding up the pill, finer and finer, until she had to admit that she was only using the rhythmic motion of spoon and bowl to distract her thoughts, and went to mix it with water.

*_Flow and Sarah, sitting in straw. Worried Sarah. Flow bites strange nighthorse, drives strange nighthorse away. Sarah is happy again._*

*_No, no_,* she sent back, and sent the strongest possible image that she could of Flow and the strange horse nestled down in straw, sleeping contentedly, and Sarah's family safe inside, cuddled up in their own beds. Sarah was inside, warm and happy. Everyone was happy.

She wasn't sure how much Flow understood, but the ambient began to soothe itself, relaxing into calm again. Whatever David was doing up there, he was managing to keep his own thoughts to himself. 

David was being an asshole, but she understood why, and if she allowed herself to pursue the thought, she might even agree with him. But she couldn't; she had to stay calm for Flow, for all of their sakes.

Sometimes it was very, very hard.

Tonight, at least, she had something else to keep her busy. She mixed the slurry of antibiotic and water as thoroughly as possible, stroke after stroke, far beyond what was needed, until finally she crouched by the stranger and cupped her hand under the back of his head.

"Come on, you," she murmured, hoisting him up. He leaned on her shoulder, limp and weak. Somewhere in the ambient, his consciousness stirred, conveyed by way of the strange black nighthorse with the white patch on its chest. "Yeah, there you go. Drink this."

She wasn't sure if it would help, but it couldn't hurt: she sent images of *_dark haired rider drinks, swallows down medicine, good for dark haired rider, makes him healthy._* She couldn't be sure how much of that made to Flow, let alone what the stranger's horse picked up, but the stranger's throat worked as he swallowed the contents of the bowl, and eventually she got it all into him. "There you go," she murmured, lowering him back to the blankets. "Just get some sleep now." *_Dark haired rider sleeps, warm and safe. Nighthorses are warm and safe. Human foals sleep in loft. Everyone is safe, everyone is sleepy.*_

Keeping her thoughts so firmly focused on a particular set of images was exhausting, but it was also helpful for her own state of mind. She checked the stranger's stitched-up side again, and found that it was still sluggishly seeping blood. Clean blood, though, no sign of infection. She bandaged it securely and then got him into the spare shirt of David's that was draped over the bench.

He went with that, pliant and limp, too deeply unconscious to object or to be more than a slight presence in the ambient. There was no spare fat on him anywhere, all lean, hard muscle. 

This man, she thought, was one of those who turned their backs on town and never looked back. There were those riders who enjoyed the company of other riders, who took lovers in town and didn't mind winters in camp. And then there were the solitary ones, those who came in from the hills infrequently and even on a caravan journey, slept apart from the others.

This man was one of those. His nighthorse's fey wildness confirmed it. Punisher -- it was Leo's thought, but Sarah couldn't help picking it up; she wasn't even sure if the horse's rider used a name for it -- didn't like being inside walls, wasn't used to it. The horse endured it now only because it was the only way it could be close to its rider. This was the kind of horse and rider who vanished into the wilderness for months, sometimes finding new trade routes and slowly expanding the human-explored parts of their world, sometimes never coming back at all.

And yet, he hadn't been completely alone; he'd had a lover, who was now dead.

She forced herself not to wonder what had happened to them out there -- not tonight, not with the ambient still this tense. Certainly she didn't wonder if whatever had done it was still out there. If it was, it wasn't close enough for the nighthorses to be aware of it, and that would have to do.

Instead, she rinsed the bowl with a little water from the pitcher in the corner, and by that time, she thought she might be able to sleep herself.

She checked the stranger's vitals one last time, and then banked the fire, blew out the candles, and climbed the ladder to the loft. David was asleep, curled towards the wall. Sarah crawled into bed with him, and felt his body shift to accommodate hers, even in his sleep.

She tried not to think *_Sorry_*, even as she leaned and wrapped her arms around him. She wasn't sure how Flow would take it; she didn't want the nighthorse thinking David had done anything to hurt her. But her body said it, and she couldn't help thinking it. And maybe David heard it, a quiet apology floating on the ambient, as he leaned into her and some of the tension seemed to ease out of his sleeping frame.

*

*_Worried. Worried nighthorse. Scared nighthorse. No partner, no mate. Frank out of reach, Frank hurt, Frank too far. Kick down wall, kick down door, find Frank --*_

_*Calm,*_ Frank thought, even half awake as he was. _*Calm calm. Nighthorse resting, nighthorse calm ...*_

He was stirring toward conscious wakefulness, and then it hit him, crashing down on him. Blood on the snow, cold, pain, and Maria, Maria, _Maria --_

He was dimly aware of the crash against the wall. It certainly roused somebody; there were thuds of feet, and he struggled to sit up, gasping in pain, as fear and rage and bloodthirst exploded across the ambient. Not just _Punisher_ \-- there were _two_ nighthorses there, and he had an instant's desperate hope that one of them was Maria's Sunstorm, but no, this was a completely unfamiliar presence in the ambient, a horse that was reacting with shock and fury to Punisher's rage.

He reached out wildly and his hand slapped warm rock. Where _was_ he? Not in the snow -- gasping, he swam in a baffling sea of then-memories and now-experiences and nighthorse-thoughts, unable to tell what was real and what wasn't. Snow and heat, light and dark, nighthorse legs flying in the falling snow and warm nighthorse flank against him and cool stones underneath -- he was falling, he was riding, he was sitting, his side exploded in pain and he didn't know what was real, what was inside or outside his head --

There was another shuddering crash, and someone burst into his awareness, shouting both physically and mentally, *_Calm down, calm down, CALM nighthorse, resting nighthorse, grass and pasture and calm calm calm --_*

Whoever they were, they were a rider, and strong. His mind was suddenly flooded with mental images of a light-haired woman and a man with curly brown hair and two children with a strong and unmistakable resemblance to both of them, cuddled down and safe with a nighthorse he didn't recognize, but he got her name-concept, picked it out of the ambient --

_*Flooding stream, rushing down hills and bending around rocks, stream curves where bank curves, stream is loudquietforcefuleasy all at once --*_

Flow, he thought. They called her Flow. And he felt through both the rider's thoughts, and through Flow's, that they were all a family, two humans and two children and one nighthorse, bonded as a herd could be. He knew in that instant that Flow had no young of her own, whether she couldn't do it or simply had not been covered by a stallion who planted seed in her, and to her way of looking at it, the human children were _*Foal, strange foal, slow to grow and very slow to run but sharp quick minds, pleasant for nighthorse, strange foal minds growing up and waking up to the world as foals do.*_

Frank felt himself drowning in the strange nighthorse's thoughts, and he pulled away, startled by the strength of it. She was angry at him. He had upset her herd. He had brought _*strange nighthorse*_ who was even now stamping and threatening *_Sarah of the sunfire mane*_ and *_mean strange nighthorse, bite hindquarters, drive away.*_

*_No!*_ he thought frantically, and sent out thoughts of calm to Punisher and to the ambient in general, while he was aware of Sarah, this mysterious Sarah, doing the same. Under their combined efforts, the two nighthorses began to calm, though Punisher was still anxious, twitchy, throwing out Frank's own thoughts, his own agitation, to fill the ambient and upset Flow again -- and beyond her, the other riders here, the town, _everyone._

Trying not to think of Maria, of what had happened to Maria, all but choked him. He doubled over with it, felt sharp pain in his side, and that was helpful, even. He curled into it and pressed his fist into his forehead and tried to drive all conscious thought from his mind. 

He didn't know where he was. He didn't know how he'd gotten here. But he kept seeing that family in the ambient (_mother father nighthorse girl boy_) and he _couldn't_ bring his grief and pain to them, not when it went along with Punisher's fury -- he simply couldn't --

"Frank?" The voice was a stranger's, quiet and calm in a way that -- given the way the ambient was going crazy right now -- could only mean a fellow rider. He uncoiled a little and looked up at the strawberry blonde rider bending over him.

"Frank," she repeatedly quietly. She'd picked his name out of the ambient; that was how bad things were, how much was spilling out through the agitated nighthorses. "Breathe with me, Frank. Whatever happened to you, you're not there now. Slow breaths. In, out. Feel your fingers and toes. Feel my hand."

She went on talking, and he breathed, and slowly the ambient began to calm. Punisher calmed, beyond the wall.

"Sorry," Frank murmured, not daring to look at her.

"I understand," she said, in that same level tone. "I know how I'd feel if it was --" _David,_ her mind finished, the thought echoing on the ambient. Sarah _*of the sunfire mane*_ took a deep quick breath. "There'll be breakfast in a few minutes," she said. "Do you think you can eat?"

He shrugged wordlessly, and Sarah's hand withdrew. Frank focused on getting himself under control. He rested his elbow on a bench beside him, and looked around a small, cozy room, with stone walls and a plank table and a fireplace that they'd put him beside, with a kettle of something simmering on the hearth. A wooden ladder led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Sarah banged on the rungs with a fist.

"Kids," she called. "Come down and eat. David, take care of things here, would you? It's safe enough, they can come down now, but I need to see to the horses."

Two children tumbled down the ladder, barely touching the rungs on their way to the floor; it was clear they'd done this thousands of times. Frank recognized them from the images he'd gotten through the ambient, as well as the yawning, tousle-haired man who followed them down and then stopped when he saw Frank watching them.

"Oh, right," he said, as if he'd forgotten about Frank -- as if he _could_, the way the ambient was -- and he seemed momentarily at a loss for how to continue. "Uh, Leo, get the bowls out, would you? Get the extra one."

The kettle turned out to contain a thick porridge, smelling of spices and dried fruit. David ladled it out, and sent the older girl out to take a bowl to her mother, while the younger boy brought a bowl to Frank. Frank wasn't remotely hungry, but he took a few bites mechanically, while watching the family at breakfast.

The man was a townsman, not a rider. It was obvious just looking at him. That was a surprise, as was the presence of children in the rider quarters. Not completely unheard of, in either case, and of course it wasn't that uncommon for riders to take lovers in town, but normally those lovers, and any resulting children, _stayed_ in town. It was particularly interesting that the two of them had managed to stay together long enough to raise a girl nearly old enough to be a rider herself. Frank thought again of the images he'd received from the local nighthorse: horse and human herd, all together.

But that was edging too close to things he couldn't think about, didn't dare think about, not here. They must have sensed at least some of it in the ambient last night, he thought, even if they hadn't been able to grasp all the details; the fact that no one, not even the kids, had asked him any questions suggested that they already understood why asking wasn't a good idea, not yet.

The porridge stuck in his throat. He set the bowl on the bench. Memory whirled just beneath the surface, like the way a frozen river's dark water churned beneath a thin skin of ice. Set a foot wrong, and you'd be drawn down into the icy depths, swallowed forever ...

"Hey." David was crouching beside him, and Frank hadn't even noticed him approach; that was a lapse of attention he could never have allowed himself in the wilderness. The children were watching wide-eyed. "You okay?"

Somehow that was what pushed him over the edge, the genuinely solicitous concern from this townsman, who could understand nothing of what he'd been through, had no idea what it was like out there. "Fine," Frank gritted out, pushing himself to his feet. Pain stabbed through his side and his head swam; he made it on sheer refusal to fall on his face in front of these people.

"You can't -- wait -- are you _leaving?"_

David sounded both shocked and distressed. Frank ignored him, looking around for his outerwear. He found his furs draped by the fire, and peeled them off the stones -- blood-stiff and ragged, they momentarily made him freeze at the tangible evidence of everything that had happened to him, to them. Except there wasn't a _them,_ not anymore. The dried blood crumbled away on his fingertips. He shook it off and started pulling on the fur-lined overpants.

"Hey. Stop. What're you doing? You're not up to this. Last night you were on death's doorstep; we just got you patched up --"

"I'm fine," Frank snapped. He just had to get _away._ Who knew how long he'd be able to stay on top of the ice. He could already feel it cracking under him, and when it broke, he couldn't be anywhere near towns or people or nighthorses other than his own.

"You are not! I saw you. Felt it. Look -- buddy --"

Frank cuffed David's hand away. "I'm not your buddy," he said. And wouldn't be anyone's friend if he didn't get out of here. Black spots danced in front of his eyes. Holding onto the wall, he groped his way to the door.

Behind him, he heard the girl exclaim, "Dad, are we just going to let him leave?"

"He's a grown-up, Leo. We can't stop him. Sarah --" David began, and then Frank lurched through the door. 

Comfortably familiar smells of hay and nighthorse greeted him, and the female rider started up from where she'd been sitting with her back against her nighthorse's flank, spoon dug into her own porridge bowl.

"What are you doing up?" she demanded.

"Need to leave." She'd understand, he thought. She had to. Punisher was on his feet and pressed his face against Frank's chest. He clung to the nighthorse's mane, slowly getting his breath back.

Sarah approached cautiously, but backed off when Punisher bared his teeth. "Look, I don't think you understand how bad off you were last night. You barely made it here. You won't last ten minutes out there, don't you understand that?"

"I can't stay here," he said. Punisher walked alongside him toward the open doorway leading out into the nighthorses' yard inside the outer wall. He used the horse's mane to stay upright. Under his furs, his side felt like there were glowing coals under his ribs. It might have broken back open again; he thought he could feel warm wetness trickling down his side.

"If you won't think of yourself, think of your horse!" Sarah trailed after him, woman and nighthorse both. "What happens to him if you get yourself killed on the mountain for no reason?"

She was right, damn it, but right now it was a choice between two terrible alternatives, and at least this one wouldn't risk the entire town. He could feel the ice cracking beneath his mental feet, and the water was the color of blood. 

"Think of the town," he shot back. He struggled with the heavy bolt on the gate, unable to find the strength and coordination to open it. "These people are your responsibility. I'm ..." He had to stop to breathe. It felt like there were bands around his chest. "-- a danger to them." He finally managed to throw the bolt. The gate fell open on a brilliant winter morning, the sun casting long shadows between the trees that were sharp as a blade.

"You can grieve," Sarah said. He looked back and saw that she was leaning against the gatepost, stopping her nighthorse with a handful of its mane. "But heal first, at least."

"Can't," was all he could say. He was hitting deeper snow now, away from the trampled area around the gate. It came up to his knees. He stumbled into Punisher's side as the blade under his ribs twisted.

Sarah's hand clamped on his shoulder, started to turn him around. Punisher snapped. Frank barely got between them in time, separating them but wrenching his side with a white-hot bolt of pain. There was an angry squeal from Flow, and when he looked up again, Sarah was a few yards away, holding her horse back with a grip on two fistfuls of mane.

"Tell me this, at least," Sarah said. She wasn't dressed to be out here, wearing only a quilted jacket suitable for the stable and yard; her nose and cheeks had turned bright pink in the sharp cold. "What got you last night -- is it still out there? Are we safe?"

_Dark thing coming out of the shadows under the trees, hungry and angry, ambient filled with a mind like the point of a blade, nothing but rage --_

"It's dead," he said hoarsely. "We got it." _*Blood on trampled snow, nighthorse tearing and tearing, taking apart --*_

That bloodthirsty rage was starting to bleed into the ambient. He turned his face into Punisher's warm hide, and sensed, through the ambient, Sarah starting to reach out -- to comfort this time, instinctive human urge -- and Punisher flattening his ears and baring his teeth at her; felt the sudden flare of defensive hostility. This time Sarah was the one who pulled away, catching at Flow again to stop the nighthorse from coming to her defense.

"See?" Frank said. He made a tremendous, probably unwise effort, and got up onto Punisher's back. The world swayed. "Where's the nearest shelter cabin?"

_"Listen_ to me, Frank. You can barely stand up. You and I both know you won't make it half a mile. And then what? You'll lay in the snow until we come out and get you?"

"Where?"

"You're going to get killed," Sarah said, but when he looked back, she was still standing at the edge of the trees, holding onto Flow's mane. She took a breath, and pointed. "Half a day's ride that way. You'll find the woodcutting trail, and then the markers. But listen, Frank, don't."

He rode on. Unable to keep his back straight, he hunched over Punisher's neck. The cold wind brought tears to his eyes.

After some floundering under the trees, Punisher found his way to the woodcutting trail, where sledges had beaten the snow down to a thin crust. The nighthorse's feet slipped and skidded on the ice; he was still tired from last night, legs sore from wading through deep, icy snow. Frank wondered how long either of them could stay out here, and what their odds really were of making the cabin, even on a pleasant day like this.

He just had to get far enough away from the town. Far enough it wouldn't matter what Punisher did, who the nighthorse decided to blame. And maybe this was far enough or maybe it wasn't, but with consciousness fading in and out, he didn't really have a choice; he couldn't hold it back anymore, and he let grief and pain for Maria crash over him, and the ambient rang with it.

*

When Sarah strode back into the riders' quarters, she nearly ran into David and the kids, clustered at the door. "Mom, what's going on?" Leo asked.

Sarah grabbed her heavy riding furs. "He's off his head. Got to go after him."

"Maybe you should let him go," David said. She turned on him, starting toward anger, but didn't make it; his eyes were sorrowful instead. "Honey, we can't do anything for him if he won't let us."

He was from town, she thought. He didn't _know._ "Do you understand what can happen to a nighthorse when its rider dies?" she asked. "And _that_ horse --" She clamped down on the thought, not wanting to get Flow more riled than she already was, but the idea of Frank's fiercely strong-willed nighthorse falling into the contagious madness that could afflict a grief-stricken nighthorse terrified her.

"All right, I get it," David said heavily. He grabbed his own heavy outer furs, and reached for the rifle by the door. "Kids, keep the gate bolted 'til we get back."

"Wait, David --" She tried to push him back through the door. "You need to stay here with the kids."

"I've had enough of staying here." His face was still the same mild-eyed face of the man she'd fallen in love with, the man who had gently drawn her in from the cold and given her a home, but there was also steel underneath, and she tended to forget that. "Leo's old enough to hold down the fort by herself for a little while."

"It's dangerous!" Sarah said.

"Less dangerous with two. Isn't that why you usually pair up with another rider going out with a caravan?"

"You're not a rider." She tried to put it as neutrally as possible, make it a statement of fact and not of accusation. Flow butted her gently from behind, and she reached around to rub under the nighthorse's chin. "David, every minute we argue, he's getting farther ahead. I can move faster without you."

"So we'd better get moving, then."

She threw her hands in the air. "Kids, you heard your father. Gate bolted, stay inside. Clean up the breakfast things. We should be back before lunch, and certainly before dark."

The kids followed them anxiously into the yard. David was fiddling restlessly with the rifle, checking and double-checking the load. Over Flow's back, Sarah said quietly, "Are you sure you can do this?"

"Yes," he said, though his face looked anything but.

The gate boomed shut behind them, and Sarah waited until she heard the snick of the bolt shooting home before she started into the woods, walking beside Flow with her hand on the nighthorse's side. If it was just her, she would probably have ridden, but she didn't want to leave David behind. He trailed her at first, then came up on her other side, rifle at the ready, jumpy and tense.

It felt very strange to go out with him like this. They just ... didn't. They'd go on family excursions when the ambient was quiet, but for this kind of expedition, she might have another rider with her, or a hunter or two from town -- but the idea of relying on David in this particular way had simply never occurred to her. It wasn't what David _did._

"Do you think --" David began, but she never found out what he was going to say, because that was when the despair in the ambient hit them like a hammer blow.

*

"His partner died," Leo told Zach. "His partner and her horse. Last night. You slept through it."

They were standing just inside the illicitly half-open gate (which they'd waited a few minutes to open, assuming Mom and Dad would be out of sight by then). Neither of them was wearing a coat. Zach had his hands tucked under his armpits, and Leo was chafing hers to stay warm. 

"I had really vivid dreams," Zach said. He hesitated. "That was real?"

"Something attacked them. I'm not sure what. Goblin-cat maybe, or something worse." Few animals would take on a nighthorse, let alone two. But there were a lot of unknown animals out there, predators that could wander in from the even wilder lands away from towns and trade roads.

"Why'd he run off then?" Zach asked reasonably. "The last thing I'd want to do is go out there _again."_

"I think he was trying to get his emotions away from the town," Leo said. "Like when Mom is really upset with Dad and goes out in the woods for a while."

"_I'd_ have stayed at home," Zach said.

Leo rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm sure you would have."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She was on the verge of answering when the ambient exploded.

Leo had never felt anything like this before. The closest thing she could remember was when Flow had lost her foal, the one and only time she'd quickened. Leo had been very young but she still remembered how the ambient had shivered with pain, and Mom had burst into tears for weeks afterward for no reason. It was overwhelming; it was pure hurt. She instinctively clapped her hands over her ears, but that did nothing. When she looked at Zach, his face splintered into rainbows and she realized that she was crying.

"Leo?" He clutched at her like a much younger child. Leo put her arms around him and hugged him, trying to choke back her tears, but it was impossible. She wasn't even really sad; she just couldn't stop crying.

*

Sarah's first thought was that this was some kind of predator trying to distract them, using fake emotions to lure in their prey. But this was too personal, too _human._

Anyway, there was no danger in this. It cut straight through her heart, reminded her of everyone she'd ever lost -- her parents, casting her out at the age of 14 when Flow had called her from beyond the wall; her first lover, dead in a rockslide in the mountains. It was all the grief in the world, pouring into her. But it was only that; it wasn't the kind of thing that did damage, that drove people to madness.

"David," Sarah murmured, and she turned to see him surreptitiously wiping at his eyes. His arm came around her, and she stopped resisting and leaned into him. Flow leaned against her and turned her head around to snuffle at Sarah's face. "I'm okay," she got out, though she was crying in earnest now.

David swallowed heavily before he said, "That's Frank, isn't it?"

"I think so." Sarah took a shuddering breath. "He must be close, for this to be so strong."

They found him a few minutes later, along with his nighthorse. They were in a glade between the trees where the snow was worn thin by sun and wind. Punisher was on his knees and Frank was a fur-clad huddle beside him, curled facefirst into the nighthorse's side. Sarah had cried into her nighthorse's fur like that when she was a girl, long ago. The pain and loneliness shuddering through the ambient brought it all back, the despair and loss of a fourteen-year-old girl whose family had told her she was dead to them.

"Stay here," she murmured to David, swallowing back her tears. "And keep Flow here, if you can." She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and approached cautiously. Flow wanted to follow. *_No no, nighthorse stays back, stays with David-mate. Protect herd.*_

Sarah crouched beside Frank, sending out calm as best she could. She was prepared to retreat in a hurry if Punisher tried to attack, but he only nuzzled at his rider's shoulder and watched her with wary white-edged eyes as she shook Frank's shoulder.

"Frank?" she said. The ambient was so full of emotion that her voice was almost lost in it. "Frank -- David, come here, see if we can get him onto the horse's back. Frank?"

He was not entirely unconscious, but not fully with it, either. Between the two of them, she and David got him across Punisher's powerful shoulders. Flow and Punisher postured at each other a bit, teeth bared, then seemed to come to some kind of understanding between them.

"What," Frank murmured, rousing a little. He wiped at his face. "You shouldn't be here --"

"Settle down," David said, and laughed shakily. "Yes, we _are_ dragging you back to town before you freeze out here. You want to fight us and the nighthorses too?"

"Not safe," Frank muttered.

Sarah clapped her hand on his leg. They were walking on either side of him, keeping him on Punisher, while Flow hovered around the edges and kept trying to shove her head under Sarah's hand, jealous of the attention the stranger was getting. "Frank. Feel the ambient. You're not hurting anyone. You're just sad. The horses understand. Come back with us."

He subsided then, perhaps because it was taking all his strength just to hold on. Sarah wiped at her eyes again; they kept welling up with tears in spite of herself. Everyone in town was probably going to be suffering from mild depression for days, she thought. But -- there was no helping it; they couldn't leave him out in the woods, and at the very least they needed to keep him long enough for his body to heal.

The mind ... that might take longer. But it wasn't the kind of mental break that brought contagion and disaster. It was only grief.

"You know how Leo always wants to bring home strays?" David murmured. "I think I know where she gets it from."

"Quiet, you," Sarah said, but she couldn't help herself; she smiled through her tears.


End file.
